Candid cameo: Juhi Chawla in The Hundred Foot Journey

Spot your favourite Indian stars in blockbuster Hollywood flicks

When Homeland’s fourth season premieres on TV in October, you’ll have two more reasons to watch the award-winning show: Life of Pi’s Suraj Sharma and The Lunchbox’s Nimrat Kaur will make brief appearances as a Pakistani medical student and an ISI agent respectively.

This is not the first time that Hollywood has featured Indian actors in cameo roles in films and TV series – and it certainly won’t be the last. The trend can probably be traced back to 1958, when I S johar played the diminutive, bright-eyed village headman in Hugo Fregonese’s Harry Black and The Tiger.

Over the years, several Bollywood A-listers have headed to Hollywood to embroider their CV and gain some mileage – Amitabh Bachchan in The Great Gatsby, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in The Pink Panther, Anil Kapoor in Slumdog Millionaire – and now, Fukkrey’s Ali Fazal will be spotted in Fast and The Furious 7.

Anupam Kher in Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Lurking behind the manic on-screen characters of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, was a small, scintillating performance by Anupam Kher. As Dr Cliff Patel, therapist to Cooper’s character Pat, he packs quite a punch in just 10 minutes of screentime. Just watch the game scene.

Om Puri in Wolf (1994)

In this weird Mike Nichols film, starring Jack Nicholson as a book editor-turned-werewolf, Om Puri appears as a doctor who prescribes an amulet and demands to be bitten so he can escape from this living hell. He’s slick as ever, despite Hollywood’s penchant for stereotypes.

Juhi Chawla in The Hundred Foot Journey (2014)

Helen Mirren and Om Puri run this show about competing Indian and French restaurants in the French countryside, but did you know that Juhi Chawla appears in two scenes right in the beginning as the wife who gets left behind in the old country.

Poorna Jagannath in Thanks for Sharing (2012)

Yet another doctor in yet another rom-com – but this one’s on the list only for Jagannath, who can add some chutzpah to just about any role. Also, she plays therapist to a bunch of sex addicts. What happens next is your guess.

Irrfan Khan in A Mighty Heart (2007)

Before he became a Hollywood regular, Irrfan Khan also took on some typical south Asian roles that certain politically-inclined plots demanded. Among these was the Daniel Pearl biopic, where he plays a detective helping out a distraught Angelina Jolie (who played Pearl’s wife). Honestly, this was a better deal than his two-minute appearance as the chief villain in The Amazing Spideman.

Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Puri plays the rotten priest in an underground Hindu temple bent on sacrificing humans so he can rule the world. It is to the director’s discredit that Harrison Ford got way more screentime despite having half as much impact as Puri’s bloodshot eyes and menacing growl.

Huma Qureshi in Trishna (2011)

A film about an Indian call centre executive employee in love with a white boy is bound to be overflowing with Indian actors. But Huma Qureshi flits on and off screen for maybe 10 seconds as an item dancer – making us pause and rewind just to make sure it was her.